


you say things with your mouth, cobwebs and flies come out

by dame_de_la_chance



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Injury, Canon Compliant, F/M, I think?, Selectively Mute Link (Legend of Zelda), Why Would You Give A Nine Year Old A Sword, actually there’s like no comfort tbh, but NOOO the goddesses gotta FUCK UP a perfectly good destiny, not explicitly described but eh, past Zelda/link but it doesn’t last long..., poor malon..... she just wants a happy life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 10:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20290117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dame_de_la_chance/pseuds/dame_de_la_chance
Summary: Malon muses over Link and his many quirks over the course of their shared history.





	you say things with your mouth, cobwebs and flies come out

**Author's Note:**

> title for lovely by twenty one pilots. i love that song.

Link has always been rather... strange.

Malon doesn’t mean this in a mean way, not at all! She loves Link! She thinks he’s wonderful, and endearing, and has a gentle soul. He’s the kindest person she knows, and definitely the sweetest. She appreciates him in so many ways for so many reasons.

Simply put, she adores him.

But she can not deny the fact that he is very odd.

To be fair, he has always been a bit odd. Ever since she first meet him, he has always been just a little off. Not in the crazy kind of sense, but in the sense that there is something not quite right about him. The sense that while he looks perfectly fine, something about him isn’t fine at all.

She sees his eyes and she doesn’t see a small boy. She sees a battle hardened warrior, with eyes that have seen more things than she ever has and ever will. She sees shoulders that are slumped from carrying heavy weights, from burdens lifted on his back. She sees chubby fingers that can wield a knife just a bit too well, can play fight with a wooden sword a bit too dangerously, with a lethal edge in every swipe, like he knows how to fight for his life and knows how to survive.

She doesn’t think he ever quite looks his age, no matter how much he grows. At nine, he is much too old for himself, with those weary eyes and strange sense of mourning. At seventeen, he is aloof and strangely innocent, strangely childish. He never fits his body, she thinks, and wonders if he thinks the same, as he slides back and forth between the soul of a child and the soul of a veteran warrior.

He is always off on adventures, his soul restless. He is constantly in search of something- some one? Distantly, she recalls Zelda mentioning someone named Navi. He is looking for a friend.

The first time he went looking for Navi, he disappeared for over two years, just before her birthday. She spent her twelfth and thirteenth birthday without a friend, and often, wondering where he could be.

By the time he resurfaced, she had grown much more than he. In fact, he looked as if he hadn’t aged a day; just like a ten year old boy, still the same height, still the same chubby cheeks and rosy lips and hardened eyes. She practically loomed over him when he first appeared, and she thought that that had been so strange. Why hadn’t he aged? Did he just have a permanent baby face? Surely he ought to have grown.

Still, she never did find her answer. Link did not speak to her about what happened in those two years. As far as she knew, he did not tell a single soul about those missing years, though she often believed Zelda to be his only informant. She wasn’t jealous, but she was curious.

She never pressed the matter, and Link always seemed grateful.

Link was strange. His body never matched him. Two years, he disappears, and his body did not change. His soul is old and new, his eyes are hardened with a war he could not have possibly fought in. 

Those two years never quite disappear, either. As they grow up together, she notices his growing seems to lag. While is fourteen with the rest of the children in the village, he looks twelve in comparison. While the others turn sixteen, he still looks fourteen. It truly is as if he didn’t age in those two years, but it by no means makes any sense.

As she watches him grow, she can not help but wonder if he ever will grow. Sometimes, it seemed as if he was permanently a child, forced to stay in his small stature despite those unnervingly ancient eyes... 

Of course, he has other quirks about him.

For one, he did not talk. For the longest time, she wasn’t even sure he could. The village only knew him as the mute boy from the forest, whose tongue laid in his hands and spoke only of gestures. She didn’t think he even had a voice.

It wasn’t until after he lived with her for a few years would she finally hear his voice. He wasn’t even talking to her, either; he was singing to Epona, songs that she had never heard. One of them, she thought, was the song of healing. Her mother used to sing that to her when she was very young, to calm her down when she was scared or upset, and it always worked like a charm.

Sometimes, she would sneak about the barn to listen to him sing to Epona. She cherished his voice, cherished its beautiful sound. It was raspy from disuse, and a bit lower than she would have guessed, but it was husky in a rather pretty way.

As time passed and years grew between them, he would eventually speak to her. Never very often, and never with many words, but he would. It was a sign of complete trust, and every time he spoke, her heart fluttered.

Many of his other quirks had to do with is social skills. Or rather, lack there of.

He had grown up in the forest all his life, and as such, wasn’t familiar in the slightest about Hylian culture. He ate bugs without a second thought, he lingered too close in people’s personal space, he had no notion of dining etiquette, and he certainly couldn’t grasp the concept of how to treat royalty. It was always funny, teaching him the culture she had been so immersed in since birth. Often she played tricks on him in their youth, and he was too naive to never not trust her. She eventually began to feel guilty, like she was exploiting his forgiving and innocent nature, and stopped playing cultural pranks on him.

She inquired periodically about why he never went back to his home. She knew he came from the forest, had been raised by the Kokiri. He never hid that knowledge from her. Everyone knew of the boy who appeared in their forest with prophetic tales of Ganondorf’s deceit.

In their youth, he did not fully explain why he never went home. His explanation was that he simply couldn’t, and then he would not further comment. It isn’t until they are adults, in their early twenties would she learn that he had been banished from the Kokiri, the same people who had raised him.

He had left the woods at nine, and once he stepped out into the world, he was not allowed back. He was tainted. He had grown. And the Kokiri could not grow up, and since he would grow up, he could not be with them. He was not them, anyway.

That must be strange, to be raised as one race only to learn you’re of another. She couldn’t imagine learning that she wasn’t Hylian, and was in fact a Zora or something. How alienated he must have felt, no longer having a culture of his own. He never called himself Hylian- he simply couldn’t, because he wasn’t. And he couldn’t call himself Kokiri, because he had been kicked out and cast away. So what was he, then?

She understands now why he never had a true home. Of course, since they were children, since he had reappeared from his two year adventure, she had offered up her home to him without understanding why he never went to his home. He was a kind soul who seemingly had no one to take him in, and she’d have been damned if she simply let him wander. 

At first, he had resisted. He was twelve years old (or was he perhaps still ten?), and he was nervous about being a burden on her and her father. He was nervous that he wouldn’t fit in, that eventually they would cast him aside like the Kokiri. 

In the beginning, he would only stay a night or two a week. They would encourage him to stay longer, but he was much too nervous to encroach upon them, as he felt, It had taken a long time to get him to stay. He finally moved in with them when he was about fourteen.

They grew up together, after that. Link was always eager for work, never wanting to be idle and always willing to help. Another quirk; his restlessness was always abundant. She often joked that he’d become a restless ghost if he never learned to settle down.

Despite the fact that they lived together, Malon watched as he took time to go on adventures. As he grew, he never did stop disappearing, but he never did so without telling them first. And if they were long journeys, he would always write to them.

Admittedly, ever since the two year gap, she’s always had a fear that he would one day disappear for good. It wasn’t that she didn’t have faith in him; she knew his loyalty ran deep, and that he would never willingly leave them hanging. But she knew his restless spirit, his hunger for adventure, his wistfulness to be useful, and knew that could be what blocks him from ever returning.

The letters never cease to ease her anxiety.

His need to help was also a bit of quirk. She had never met another human who was ever so driven to be helpful, to be useful. On the farm, he was always desperate to do something, to feed the Cuccos, milk the cows, fix the roof, anything at all, so as long as it helped them. He often went about town, looking for people who needed assistance, never ever able to say no.

A simple trip to the market could take hours if she brought him along. He would run errands for the townspeople, help a little girl find her parents, find lost dogs, give money to those who needed it. He would do all of this and never tire, never stop.

His genuine need to help always astounded her.

Eventually, that need drove him to become a knight. She watched him train in the empty plains, watched him hone his already perfect swords skills, skills he had mastered when he was nine, skills she couldn’t understand where he had learned since it wasn’t from the forest; the Kokiri’s were peaceful and did not believe much in fighting. She watched him practice archery, watched as he hit each target dead in the centre and yet still be disappointed. She watched as he mastered hand to hand combat, able to take down the guards he’d make bets on with practiced ease.

She watched as his drive to help drove him further away from her. It hurt a bit, to watch him become distant, though of course never truly. He was still eager to assist even when training, always there to lend a second hand.

Idly, she knew that he had a greater destiny than this farm. Never once did she discourage him from his training; she cheered for him and chided him anytime he was nervous. She never once deterred him from his course, though she often wished she had.

Eventually, the day came for him to try out. He competed against several men for the position of a knight, competed against warriors who had served in the Hylian Civil War, had conpeted against men well versed in the art of violence. He won without discourse.

Zelda has become absolutely gleeful. She had appointed him with knighthood and the position in the Royal Knights was filled. Malon knew that the princess would have simply given it to him had he asked, but he never had. He had always been in favour of hard work and earning than simply taking. 

Months would pass by, and Link would come and go. As the youngest knight in the history of knighthood, let alone as a Royal Knight, the expectations for him were high. He had to prove himself to not only his superiors, to the king whose respect always seemed hard to give towards him, to the nobles who did not like the unruly forest child, but also to his own peers. His fellow knights did not seem to appreciate his skills nor his abilities. He was a child; what did he know of battle? Of war? Or survival?

Malon did not know how, but she knew he did. Link’s eyes were hardened with blood, his chubby hands well versed in sword moves no nine year old should know, and his shoulders taught with heavy burdens. He has fought before, he has seen bloodshed, he has seen war. Maybe now, he has a chance to prevent it.

She does not see Link until he is eighteen (sixteen?), two years after he had joined the Royal Knights. He always wrote letters, and kept her informed to the best of ability. She was never left with a nagging fear that he would run off on her, though in the back of her mind she was still nervous for her friend. 

She had heard rumours of a skirmish up North, where there was the possibility of another Civil War. Those skirmishes had been going on since the crowning of a new royal, last year. There was pure disdain for the new royal heiress, the now Queen Zelda, because she is too young, she is unmarried, she is unfit. There are rumours of scandals, of her sleeping with a knight, of her in love with someone who is but a commoner.

The traditionalists are not pleased at her efforts of any kind. She is too radical, too modern, and too willing to give up traditional mindsets. She is too trusting of the Gerudo, of the people who are destined to birth the man of great evils, too willing to give them friendship when in their eyes, they don’t deserve it.

Malon knows who the knight is. Link is nothing but honest with her, and while he never blatantly says they are together, she knows they are. She knew they would eventually become something much more than comrades, than friends. They always had some strange connection she could never understand. 

Admittedly, she was a bit jealous of Zelda. She had began to realise she might have feelings for him, and was regretful that she hadn’t acted upon them. It was a bit harrowing to think of the boy who had become her brother as maybe a different sort of familial figure. She held no ill will to either of them or their love, but she was still a tad bitter.

She had always dreamed of a knight sweeping her off her feet, after all. Link was more than the perfect candidate.

No matter the case of his relationship status, Malon would always love him as a valued friend. 

He appeared on her doorstep one night, with little warning. There was a smile on his lips, and a light in his soul. He was much taller than she remembered him being; now, he towered over her instead of the other way around. He was lanky and thin and she immediately was determined to stuff him full at the sight.

They enveloped in a loving hug, full of warmth and excitement to see the other. Link had missed her just as much as she had missed him. 

He was different, though. He was much more haggard than she remembered. He was weary, his soul filled with a tiredness that wrapped around his bones. His eyes had always been hardened with a steel only veterans ever had, but now they were dimmed with something she could not describe. 

And physically, he had changed so much. Scars littered his skin, scars that showed he had been through war and back again, but survived. Scars that he dared not show her, refusing to take off his jacket as if he did not want to show her what the rest of his body looked like.

And most of all, he was missing an eye.

“Link,” she had whispered, and she cradled his cheeks. She didn’t dare touch the scar across his eye; it looked painful and she wasn’t sure how old it was. “How did this happen?”

He could not meet her gaze. He lifted his hands and hesitantly moved them, simply saying, “The skirmish up North did not go as planned.”

She left it at that. She didn’t want to push on a subject that was clearly... traumatic. Besides, he was here now, and that’s what mattered most. Still, it was a jarring transformation. She knew that there was no eye behind his closed lid; she knew it had been ripped out.

That thought terrified her. A wound like that could have easily killed him. Would she have ever known he died?

He visited much more frequently after that. She thanked the Goddesses that he did, because after just one taste of having him back, she could not imagine another year, another mounts, passing by without him in her sights.

The skirmishes died down, for the most part. Because of that, he was able to stay near the castle more, and thus near by her. Letters were no longer needed, and she was able to talk to him almost daily by the time they were twenty.

He told her almost everything, and never seemed to really hold back. There were somethings he did, somethings too personal to share, like what happened to his eye, but for the most part, he was an open book. He indulged her in information about anything she wanted.

She eventually learned of Zelda and his falling out. It was mutual, and it didn’t change their friendship; it just turned out that they were better off as friends than lovers. She could see it hurt him, though. Still, she only listens and does not ask.

They eventually go on their first date. Malon asks him out, of course, because another of his quirks is his shyness. It is rather funny, to see such a great and revered man so shy around his peers. He is always so nervous when in conversation, always nervous around others, and just generally isn’t much of a talker.

He is especially shy when it comes to love. He is easy to blush and easy to embarrass. Even the tamest of petnames turn him a red that rivalled her hair. She loved to tease him and see his ears turn pink.

It’s hilarious to see a battle hardened man turn red and sputtering at the calling of ‘honey’.

They danced around a bit before she finally confessed. She knew the feelings were mutual, and she knew he would never say a thing as long as she didn’t. She knows he is nervous to be vulnerable, she knows he is nervous to not be reciprocated, she knows he is nervous to trust another person with something so fragile. He has such a big heart, and she knows it has been crushed so many times, again and again, that he has become too nervous to share it.

She thinks about his friend Navi, thinks about the names of the people he tells stories of and only speaks in past tense about, and understands why he’s so scared. 

And after falling out with Zelda, she knows he is afraid of not being good enough. He is afraid that he won’t be a good lover, that he wouldn’t be able to provide her with what she needs. He is nervous to lose a friend.

But eventually, they come together.

He is as gentle as a lover as he is a person. He takes things slow, and not just for her sake. He himself is slow to love, slow to touch, slow to physical love. And he is nervous of going too fast, of loving too much. 

They work perfectly together, like the cogs in a clock. 

And for a while, it was perfect. Everything was perfect and all of Malon’s dreams had come true. A knight in shining armour had truly come and swept her off her feet. She was in love with the perfect man, and while they had occasional squabbles, they never had any problems.

It was wonderful.

When she was twenty four, and he was twenty three (twenty one? Fifty? Who knows? It sometimes feel as if he is ageless), a war broke out. The Gerudo were attacked by the traditionalists that had started the skirmishes up North all those years ago. Another civil war within Hyrule broke out as sides became conflicted on who to support: the Gerudo or the traditionalist. 

The Gerudo’s, outraged that people were picking the traditionalists side, did not waver in fighting. Eventually, loyalties were tested between each domain, and a fight broke out amongst the five races of Zora, Gerudo, Hylian, Goron, and while not official, the Kokiri. It was serious enough to drag the Kokiris into the war.

The war raged and raged. Zelda did her best to try and negotiate, to try and spread talks of peace, but not everyone would have it. Not until soldier after soldier had fallen, not until villages were plundered and civilians slaughtered, but until thousands upon thousands were killed. Years would pass by, and peace would seem fleeting and scarce.

Link was deployed, of course. It was his duty as a knight and to his people, to his Queen. He had been sent to the worst part of the war zone, near the boarder between the Gerudo and Hyrule. They had hoped that with the power of the Royal Knights, whom were the best of the best, they would be able to stop the destruction of prosperity swiftly.

All the knights perished, from strange magic and horrible weapon made wounds.

Link went missing.

Malon’s heart shatters.

No one can find Link. It is as if he had disappeared off the face of the earth. Like he drifted in the wind as a balloon would, disappearing over the horizon.

Malon mourns. She mourns and she mourns and she mourns for her love. She mourns even more when she finds that she is pregnant. Her child may never know their father.

Queen Zelda is in just as much agony as she. She deploys as many resources as she dares in search of him, but alas, there is no body to find, no darling of her’s ever to be seen. Besides, there is still a war to fight, and the Queen can not waste time over a corpse.

The war wages within Hyrule and her heart.

She remembers sending him off, remembers her gut twisting as she watched him sit on Epona and adjust his armour. She grabbed on to his arm and whispered, “Promise you’ll come back.”

He gave her a small smile. “I promise.”

With parting tears and kisses, he left. He rode off into the early morning, and she watched him become a speck in the blue sky. The last she saw of him, the last she heard, a promise to return and his back to her.

If there was one thing about Link, it was that he did not lie. It was a quirk that he had all his life, ever since they first met. It was as if he simply could not lie.

When she was young and she had caught on to his inability to not tell the truth, she imagined stories as to why. She often thought maybe he had been cursed by a fairy after spouting too many lies, and now had to tell the truth. 

She loved gossiping and talking to him for that very reason. He never lied to her, not once, and as far as she knew, never lied to others. It made him a bit blunt at times, thanks to his lacking knowledge of etiquette, but his word became the only one that mattered to her. She knew he would never deceive her or lead her astray on purpose.

When she was younger, she loved listening and asking him questions. Admittedly, she’d ask very personal questions, or opinion questions, or inquiries about gossip. He would never lie, and sometimes overshared, and often it was used for laughs on her part.

Still, he became the only person she fully trusted. No matter what he said, it always was truthful. He may deflect from topics she’d pry at, or he’d simply refuse to answer, but he never gave her a false answer to any question.

It was that honesty that she fell in love with, if she let herself admit it. 

That inability wasn’t an actual inability. He told her why he couldn’t lie not long after she proposed to him. After all, a marriage can’t be based on secrets. Both of them did sharing, over secrets they would have rather buried deep. 

(She knows there are still secrets that are held deep within his hearts. He has withheld things from her, things that he has seen, details that made his eyes so ancient and warrior like. She knows he holds more stories inside, more adventures he will never share. She does not care. There are some things that simply must remain a secret, something’s one can not bare to she da light on.)

He told her tales of a hero who traveled through time, a hero who fought against Ganon, a hero who saved Hyrule, who wielded the Master Sword. A hero who was nine years old and wasn’t allowed to touch the sword until he was older. A hero who was locked into slumber until he turned sixteen, but he still had the mind of a nine year old. A hero who had made so many friends on his adventure only to loose each one.

A hero who was forgotten.

He was that hero, he told her. But all the acts of courage he did was erased when in a final act of generosity, Zelda sent him back to his time. He prevented Ganondorf’s uprising by informing the king of what was to come.

He was the anonymous source that caused Ganon to be executed. She remembered that event fairly well; it was public, and not without controversy.

But no one remembered all he did. So he tried to tell others, tried to get them to understand him and all that he’s seen, because he wasn’t really nine anymore, and he was sick of them treating him like he was. He told adults and children and anyone with ears.

But every time, they laughed at him. They accused him of lying for attention, they jeered at the fairyless boy for his wild imagination, they mocked him. They didn’t understand, they didn’t believe, and they didn’t care.

He was so tired of being called a liar that he made sure from then on, nothing he said would ever be false. He refused to be called a liar ever again.

This is part of the reason why he never speaks. He tried so hard to share his traumatic experiences, tried so hard to talk to others only to be continually shut down, jeered at, mocked. He reached out to everyone only to have his hand slapped. 

He could never lie if he did not speak. He could never be mocked for speaking if he remained silent. No one would doubt him as long as he gave them no reason too. It is of no wonder why he has such terrible anxiety over his voice.

She had seen his nine year old eyes herself, a warrior with burdens so heavy, with eyes that have seen things no nine year should have. She knows he is telling the truth. She knows his story is real.

She always knew he was a hero.

His promises meant more to her than anything. He never lied, he never allowed himself too. He never made a promise he couldn’t keep in fear of becoming the lier the adults and children believed him to be.

He had to come back. He had to.

He wouldn’t let himself become what he dreaded.

So she waited. Years and years, she waited. She raised a healthy child, a girl with blond hair and beautiful, beautiful blue eyes and blotchy brown freckles and a gorgeous smile. A little girl who looked just like her father, who had his laugh and smile and hair and face. A little girl who had his need to help, his burning desire to be useful, his restless soul, his courage.

A little girl who grew up, from a baby to a toddler to a child to a teen to an adult. Who grew up and moved away, who started her own family, who lived and lived and laughed and laughed.

A child who never met her father. A father who never met his child.

She clung to the hope that he would resurface. They found a body, near the Lost Woods, decades and decades after the battle in the north where he disappeared. Adorned in golden armour of royal insignias, many believed that it was the lost soldier. 

By that time, Zelda has passed. She died young too, her heart broken in places Malon didn’t quite understand. She brought Hyrule back from the dredges of war, back to its former glory, back from the years and years of abuse the land received. After the shambles of the remaining society blossomed into a beautiful kingdom of wealth, Zelda passed without much fanfare. It was as if she had lived her purpose, and was destined to die right after.

Zelda could not give the body its identity. The body was buried in the graveyard behind the castle despite its technical lack of confirmation. They gave him a grave, no name, but a scripture that read him as cursed. Malon refuses to believe it was Link.

He promised he would come back.

He had to come back.

Like a clock, she became a hand of the clock, chasing the other hand around and around. She chased rumour after rumour to find lInk, only to be disappointed again and again. 

Winter’s frost and spring’s blossoms and summer’s heat and fall’s crops all passed by, year after year. Malon weathered with time, aged like Link never seemed to.

Until finally, on a cold day in spring, alone in her farmhouse, she died.

She was met in the afterlife with the Golden Goddesses. She was brought and pushed through the gates, and her soul soared in excitement to see him again. She met with Zelda and Ingo and even her father, and so many of the villagers she remembered bustling through her town.

But she did not find him.

He would come, she knew. One day, when his time on Hyrule was over with, he would come to rest. He would no longer be needed to serve the land he had bled for, no longer need to sacrifice anymore of his time. One day, he’ll come home, and she’ll welcome him with open arms.

She can wait. He will come.

He never came.

**Author's Note:**

> ocarina of time makes me so FUCKING sad JESUS CHRIST CAN THE HERO OF TIME GET A FUCKING BREAK
> 
> during the war that breaks out, i think link got cursed by some black magic. in his hysteria, he desperately seemed out his home, which was the Lost Woods. he traveled and died there. the Lost Woods become the sacred grove as it grows over the temple of time. link becomes the hero’s shade and haunts the grove where he died, wherein he’ll meet his eventual descendant. he gets stuck it between the realm of living and dead after becoming consumed with regret. 
> 
> Communication is KEY in any relationship and i think malon and link would highly revere that. However, I think there are some things link just can’t bring himself to share. mainly, the events in majoras mask. I think what happened there is something he will keep buried close to his heart, and he may indulge malon in come of it, he would never tell exactly what happened. 
> 
> the trauma link had gone through and the refusals of help from his peers is what caused him to stop speaking. he couldn’t bare being constantly seen as a liar and thought that what he had to say was always wrong, so he figure he just didn’t have anything to say. he was never very loud in the first place, but it really sealed him shut.
> 
> poor malon, always waiting for link.


End file.
